Big news broke in the search engine world last week…Flash files (.swf) can now be indexed by the major search engines. Flash developers will be rejoicing, but at the risk of being a killjoy I’m not sure this is really worthy of celebrating…
The news broke last week, but honestly it feels like more of a PR exercise for Adobe than any real break though in the search friendliness of Flash. Our recommendation is still to use Flash only for rich media, and leave content and navigation to HTML, which will always do a better job.
The announcement actually opens more questions than provides answers, and here’s a few reasons to remain cautious…
- If you use JavaScript to display your flash movie you’ll still be invisible. Try visiting pepsi.com with JavaScript turned off to see what I mean.
- The text and links in a Flash file can only be indexed if they are infact in the Flash file…which is to point out that most modern Flash is developed as a shell these days with the content called in from remote XML or HTML files. In this case the search engine may well find the content but it will not be indexed as part of the page as intended.
- Of course if the textual content is bound up inside an image within the Flash then it will not be indexed.
- Even if you include all your content and product information as text within the Flash file then you are still a long way from being search engine optimised. The reason each category and product on your site should have its own page is that this gives Google pages with specific focus to index…they can tell exactly what each page is about and rank them for appropriate keyword queries. If you have all your category and product information bound up in one monolithic Flash file then it may well be indexable but the page is unlikely to rank for anything much because the content provides no clear topical focus. A well constructed and organised HTML site with the same content will always out rank the Flash one.
- And if it wasn’t clear from the last point there remains a big issue with addressability. Each discrete chunk of content on your site (be it a category or a specific product or news item) should have its own url. This is important so people can link to it, but also so Google and the other search engines can identify relevant pieces of content to rank for relevant keywords. It is possible to do this with Flash, but typically it is not done well.
I wrote this post because I shudder to think of all the Flash development that is likely to sell now with the added assurance that it is “search engine friendly”. Fact is that indexation is only one part of the puzzle and Flash still falls short in other respects.
Our advice is unchanged…by all means, use Flash for rich media, but leave the navigation and content to HTML.
If you are determined to introduce Flash to your site then make sure you follow a ‘progressive enhancement’ design paradigm. This means first developing your site using the most basic technology, ie. HTML, and then adding handlers to introduce Flash or JavaScript powered UI enhancements if they are supported by the client browser. This way you can be sure that your site will suit search engine spiders and users without the lastest Flash plugin…and for those that do have Flash they get the nice UI enhancements.